The evening service is already in full swing. People sway and sing to the band onstage. Father Francis rocks side to side to the increasingly upbeat music, like a boat in distress. His palms open to the fluorescent ceiling and his eyebrows knit together as he concentrates hard on communing with the creator. As the music hits fever pitch, he shouts, crescendoing, “OH JESUS CHRIST, OH GOD, OH JESUS!”

At the age of seven, Hala lost her best friend. “We’re soulmates,” Reem
said. “Because God tied our spirits together before we were born.” Reem
was confident that they shared the angel that had breathed into their
mothers…

We had renounced it all and taken on the yogi’s simple garb, a single piece of cloth that closed around our body and remained on it oh so gently, like the chill of the wind on wet skin. And with the garb we had taken on a commitment to the yogi’s life: non-attachment, non-violence, and dedication to God …